“Embracing the truth is never wrong, Katherine Elar,” Deitra said. “Yet it is rarely without pain.”
“W-why?” It was all Katherine could force past her throat as the tears began to fall, but Deitra seemed to understand her meaning well enough.
“Because you must know. You must understand,” the goddess said, her voice full of compassion and empathy. “This is what you fight for, Katherine, you and the man, Rion, and, of course, Alesh. This is the fate that searches for a way past the threshold of all peoples, and only you and those others can keep it back. It wants in, this fate, it lurks outside, in the shadows, searching, always searching for some means of entry. You need to—you must—deny it.”
“How?”
“Leave your doubt behind, Chosen. It does not serve you, not in this, not ever. You have been selected for a reason—believe that, and see that the others believe. For the world stands at a precipice now, and one misstep will carry it over to shatter on the rocks below. The Son of the Morning has left you, hasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Katherine said, “there was a note…”
Deitra nodded. “He must be returned, Katherine. He must be brought back to himself. The darkness which now sustains him might give him strength but so, too, does it destroy him, for such unholy power is never free. You must hurry, you and your friends, and you must find him. Else…” She trailed off, glancing around at the ruins of the city. There was no need for her to finish, for her meaning was clear enough, could be found in the crumbling skeleton of what had once been a living, breathing city.
A sudden look of alarm came over the goddess’s face. “There is little time, Katherine. Doom comes. Remember—you must bring Alesh back from the shadows, however you may.”
“Doom, Mistress?” Katherine said, her heart suddenly racing. She looked up at the sky, expecting to find it filling with storm clouds as it had the last time Shira had intruded upon the dream Deitra gave her. She remembered distinctly the storm, the great roiling mass of dark clouds, the thunder, the wind tearing at her, and the goddess too. “You mean Shira, Goddess? Your mother is coming?”
“The doom is not her, Katherine Elar, not this time, and the danger is not mine but yours. Now, awaken, and guard yourself—you and the man, Rion, have stumbled into a nest of vipers, and being ignorant of the danger will not save you from their bites.”
The goddess opened her mouth and a single, unearthly note filled the air, rising and rising in pitch and intensity until it wasn’t a note at all but a wail, the funeral wail for all that had been lost, the dying city and its people, for all that might be lost. Suddenly, Katherine felt a pressure pushing against her, as if someone of great strength were shoving her away.
Bring him back, Chosen, a voice said in her head, fading as she felt herself being pushed away, bring…him…back.
***
Katherine awoke with a gasp, sitting up in bed. She was bathed in sweat, and her breathing was ragged. In the darkness of the room, she could see nothing, could hear nothing save for her own heart hammering in her ears, and the soft snores of Rion from where he slept on the floor. Nothing, no footsteps outside in the hall, no banging on the door from someone trying to force their way inside, yet she felt hunted just the same, and the goddess’s words echoed in her mind. A nest of vipers.
“Rion, wake up.” When they’d finally made it to their rooms, she’d been so tired that she had done nothing but remove her boots before lying down and promptly falling asleep, a thing for which she was now grateful. She began pulling on her boots, and in the seconds the simple task took, the silence began to take on an ominous, almost suffocating feel. “Rion,” she hissed louder, not daring to speak beyond a whisper.
The man continued to snore, and Katherine tugged on her second boot before kneeling next to him—his form little more than a shadow in the gloom—and giving him a shake.
He groaned softly, wiping a hand across his face, but he did not wake. She gave him another shake, harder this time, and when he still did not rouse, she slapped him across the face, perhaps not as soft as she could have. Rion jerked awake, and she only just managed to clamp her hand on his mouth, muffling his scream of surprise. “Quiet,” she said. “Something’s wrong.”
“I’ll say,” he muttered sleepily once she’d taken her hand away. “I’ve dreamt of being wakened by a woman before, but never with a slap to the face. What in the name of the—”
“Shut up,” she hissed. “We have to get out of here.”
He frowned. “What about Darl? Has he shown up yet?”
Katherine realized that in her haste to comply with her goddess’s wishes, she hadn’t even given the Ferinan man a thought, but she forced the shame down, shaking her head as she scanned the room. “No, he’s not here.”
“Then why do you want to leave?” he said, sitting up and propping his back against the bed. “Gods, woman, you’re the one that kept saying how much you wanted to sleep in a real bed, under a real roof. A real—”
“Yes,” she snapped, “but that doesn’t mean I want my throat cut while I’m sleeping.”
His knives were in his hands a second later, his eyes scanning the shadow-filled room. “Who is it? Have the Redeemers found us?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But Deitra came to me in a dream and told me that we were in danger.”
Rion sighed, grabbing his own boots and pulling them on. “Of course she did.” He was standing a moment later, then he frowned, looking at Katherine. “You hear that?”
“Hear what? I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly.” Eriondrian Tirinian was a nobleman, one who had spent his life in the luxury of his family’s manse, attending balls and gentlemen’s clubs with his rich, powerful friends. But Rion…well, Rion was a man who wiled away his hours in the poor district, playing cards and dice with men who wouldn’t think twice about cutting a man’s throat for him, if they got it in mind to do so. And men like that, he’d found, almost always had it in mind. He knew the streets, knew criminals, just as he knew the silence that often fell before the violence struck, that moment of stillness before the blades were drawn and the blood was spilled. He knew that moment, had felt it before. And he felt it now. “Something’s wrong,” he said, and Katherine rolled her eyes as he echoed her earlier statement.
“I told you as much.”
But Rion didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were scanning the room. “No windows. Gods, but I’ve been a fool. Two doors on the left, and the stairs on the right, isn’t it?”
“What?” Katherine said, not following him.
“We don’t have any time,” he growled. “The hall, outside. I was tired, and wasn’t paying much attention, but I remember two doors on our left then the stairs on the right. Do you?”
“Y-yes.”
He gave a single, sharp nod. “And a window, on the wall by the stairs. Small, but maybe big enough.” He turned, eyeing her critically. “Do you have a weapon?”
She swallowed, shaking her head, and he hissed a curse. “Alright, leave everything—we’re going to have to move, and fast. Just stay behind me and—what in the name of the gods do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting my harp,” she said, continuing to slide it out from underneath the bed where the driver had stowed it.
“Look, lady, we have to get out of here, and we don’t have time for you to be lugging around a—”
“We never would have made it here if not for my harp,” Katherine snapped. “Or do you not recall the guardsman?”
His jaws clenched, but he nodded. “Fine. Just so long as you’re prepared to hit someone over the head with that damned thing, if it comes to it. You can buy another harp, if you have to, but you’ve only got the one neck. Now, when we get out here, you follow my lead, understand?”
“Of course.”
***
Of course, Rion thought, as he rested his hand on the door knob. Oh, sure, the woman would follow him willingly enough, in the same way a fa
rmer followed an ox when plowing his field. Let the ox think he was in control, let him believe it, just so long as he walked where the farmer wanted him to go, he needn’t be reminded of the reality of the thing. But he banished the thoughts from his mind. They would not serve him, not now. They were in a town they did not know, facing a danger they did not understand, and right now his only concern was getting out alive. He tried the door and wasn’t surprised to find it locked.
“Damnit,” he said, “they’ve locked us in.”
“Then…what do we do?”
“Just hold on a minute,” he muttered, trying to slide the edge of his knife into the crack separating the doorway from the door itself. But he discovered a second later that there wasn’t enough room. “Of course the bastards would make sure this was the one door that was actually in good shape.” He turned back to see her staring at him, her face pale in the gloom, her eyes wide with fear.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“I…” he began, not knowing how he was going to finish, but suddenly there was a sound from the other side of the door, and he held up a hand, demanding silence. A grunt, and the sound of someone working at the latch. “Get back,” he whispered to Katherine, stepping away from the door himself and raising his knife.
They waited in tense silence as whoever it was fumbled at the latch, making more noise than Rion would have expected from men coming to murder people in their sleep. When the door finally opened, he lunged forward, his knife leading, and heard a shout of surprise from the shadowy form standing in the doorway. The figure stumbled away, barely evading the blade.
“W-wait,” a voice said, “it’s me, damnit.”
Rion hesitated, frowning at the man’s familiar voice. The newcomer held a lantern, its flame casting the dark hallway in an orange glow. Rion caught a glimpse of the man’s face and grunted in surprise. “Barrel? What are you doing here?”
The man winced, holding up a hand, and in the ruddy light Rion saw that it was coated in blood. Peering closer, he noted that the man was bleeding from a wound in his stomach. Katherine must have noticed as well, for she hurried forward. “Oh, no he must have gotten you,” she said, shooting an angry look at Rion, “come in, please, and we’ll—”
“Thank you, lady,” the guard said, clamping his hand back down on the wound, “but there’s no time. It wasn’t your husband here who cut me.” He shot a look over his shoulder. “Listen, they’ll be here any minute—you two gotta get out of town. Now.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Rion demanded. “What did you do, bringing us here?”
“Nothin’,” the guard said, shaking his head, “nothin’. Or, leastways, I didn’t mean to. But the council met about it—ain’t often we get strangers in town, you know? And…the goddess, Shira, well…she told them to take you.”
“To take us?” Rion asked.
The guard nodded somberly, and there was no trace of the amusement Rion had seen in his eyes after Katherine’s song. “And kill you.”
Rion let out a hiss. “You fucking ba—”
“Enough,” Katherine snapped, silencing him. “Do you mean to say that this town…worships Shira?”
The guardsman nodded. “Yes.”
Rion groaned. “Of course. All the towns in the world, and we walk into one full of worshipers to a goddess who wants to see us dead. Gods, but my luck must be turning.”
“Would you shut up?” Katherine demanded, then she turned back to the guard. “Of course,” she said, as if only just realizing something. “That’s the ‘they’ Shek was talking about, the ones you were so afraid of.”
The guard nodded again, leaning his bulk against the wall, as if he could no longer fully support himself.
“But…if that’s true…” Katherine went on, “then why are you here? Why are you helping us?”
The man’s mouth worked for a second, as if he couldn’t come up with the words he meant to say. “Thing is—” he began, but they all froze at the sound of footsteps on the stairs at the end of the hall. Furtive, quiet, barely audible, but roaring like thunder in Rion’s already anxious mind. The guard spun, raising the lantern aloft, and Rion heard Katherine gasp beside him. Not that he could blame her.
In the shifting, orange light, the people crowding the stairs, making their way up them, looked like demons from some demented painter’s masterpiece. There were twenty at least, those that couldn’t fit on the stairs waiting down below. They ranged in age from a young boy that couldn’t have been anymore than eleven, maybe twelve years old, to several old men and women, including Shek, the innkeeper, who was near the front of the group. But what struck Rion the most was how none of them spoke, not even when the lantern light fell on them. That and, of course, the knives they all held, including the youth. Their eyes, too, were strange, barely human at all, eyes that belonged on some wild beast stalking its prey.
It was the most terrifying thing Rion had seen in a week full of terrifying things. He would have screamed if he could, but the air seemed to have frozen in his lungs, his throat, and all that escaped him was a wheeze of shock and fear. The townspeople were taking their time, obviously glorying in the fear their presence induced, anticipating the slaughter to come, and why not? There were many of them—far too many—and what was coming seemed all too certain, all too unavoidable.
Rion considered jumping over the railing to the ground floor, but he immediately dismissed the idea. There were more down there, dozens of them. It appeared as if the whole town had shown up, as if they’d all come out to a party. But if it was a celebration they had planned, it would be a crimson one, the sounds of screams and wails of agony replacing the normal shouts of laughter. Too many to make it past, even if the fall—fifteen feet at least—didn’t break his ankle or worse.
“Thank you, lady…for the song.”
Rion turned back to see that the guardsman looking at Katherine, his face almost childlike in its innocence, its near-worship of her. He smiled a small smile and gave Rion a wink. Then, with a bellow of terror and determination, Barrel rushed toward the mass of people, the closest of which had just reached the top of the stairs. The guard continue to yell as he charged, his thick stout of wood—Wanda, Rion thought wildly, he called it Wanda—raised in the air above his head.
Their would-be killers were pressed so tightly together that they couldn’t have dodged the onrushing guard even if they’d wanted to. For all their combined mass, the guardsman was a big man, and when he struck the first of their number, a ripple went through the group. Men and women toppled and fell, never letting out so much as a scream, and suddenly the stair railing broke and the group, including the guardsman, went spilling over the edge to crash onto the ground below.
“No!” Katherine screamed, in her voice the shock, the horror that Rion himself felt.
He risked a glance over the edge to see that several of the people had not risen from where they’d fallen, some with legs twisted at unnatural angles from the long drop, and one or two did not move at all, their necks clearly broken. The guardsman, though, was getting to his feet, had only just gotten one knee under himself when those who had risen, along with the others who had crowded the room, surged forward in a tide of humanity, their knives flashing. Barrel screamed in agony and fear, and Rion saw hands come back, the darting, questing blades of steel they held red with blood. The guardsman fought on, swinging his wooden club in wide, vicious arcs, and Rion heard more than one skull crack beneath the stout length of wood.
With his other hand, the guardsman shoved those closest to him away, but for every one he felled or knocked away, two more took his place, and soon he was being dragged down under their combined weight.
“Leave him alone!” Katherine screamed from beside Rion, and the sound of her voice somehow managed to order his own frantic, chaotic thoughts.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing her by the arm, “we’ve got to get out of here.”
He dragged her toward the window, relieved to see that it w
as bigger than he had remembered. They would fit through it, surely. We’d better. He used the handle of his knife to break the glass, running it quickly around the edges to tear away any lingering glass. “You first,” he said, pushing her toward the opening.
“W-we can’t,” she protested, looking back, “we can’t leave him.”
Rion grabbed her arms roughly and spun her toward him. “Listen,” he said, “listen. If he isn’t dead already, he’s wishing he was, and there’s nothing we can do to help him, you got that? If we try, we’ll both just end up dead, and how will that help anyone?”
Her eyes were wide. “B-but we can’t—”
“Do you want Alesh to die, is that it?” he demanded, hating himself for his cruelty but knowing that they were running out of time. Any second, those below would finish with the guardsman, and then they would be coming up the stairs. “Do you want Sonya to die?”
“Damn you,” she said, her face twisting with anger. “Damn you.”
“Damn me if you want,” he said, giving her a shake, “just get out the fucking window.” He pushed her toward it. She shot one more look at the dying guardsman’s weakening struggles, then, to Rion’s great relief, she began to climb through the opening, pushing the harp case in front of her.
A quick glance behind showed the townspeople finishing their bloody work and beginning to rise. Rion couldn’t see much of the guardsman in that mass of people, but what he did see was enough to make his stomach turn threateningly. Blood and entrails, as if he’d been torn to pieces by beasts…or nightlings. The thought was not a welcome one, but it would not leave him. “Hurry up,” he hissed as some of the townspeople began to look up, regarding him with those blank, dead stares.
The Truth of Shadows Page 24